An employee of the S.F. Department of Public Works sits in an unmarked van, hoping to catch an illegal dumper.

An employee of the S.F. Department of Public Works sits in an unmarked van, hoping to catch an illegal dumper.

Photo: Sam Wolson, Special To The Chronicle

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Remnants of illegally dumped trash sit near the corner of Fitch Street and Quesada Avenue in the Bayview district.

Remnants of illegally dumped trash sit near the corner of Fitch Street and Quesada Avenue in the Bayview district.

Photo: Mike Kepka, The Chronicle

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Illegal dumping - common in dark, deserted areas of the Bayview - costs the city around $4 million each year.

Illegal dumping - common in dark, deserted areas of the Bayview - costs the city around $4 million each year.

Photo: Sam Wolson, Special To The Chronicle

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A sign warning a fines for Illegally dumping trash is surrounded by trashnear the corner of Shafter and Griffith Streets in the Bayview Dristrict on Monday Sept. 30, 2013 in San Francisco, Calif. Police and the Department of Public Works are trying to catch illegal dumpers in the act. The Bayview is one of the most popular spots in the city for illegal dumping, which costs the city about $4 million a year. less

A sign warning a fines for Illegally dumping trash is surrounded by trashnear the corner of Shafter and Griffith Streets in the Bayview Dristrict on Monday Sept. 30, 2013 in San Francisco, Calif. Police and ... more

Photo: Mike Kepka, The Chronicle

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S.F. fighting illegal dumpers in Bayview

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(10-01) 14:13 PDT San Francisco -- For the second night in a row, Ian Schneider and Rodney Hampton are staking out the back of a Bayview warehouse from inside a graffiti-covered van with a plastic curtain covering the driver's side window. Equipped with a low-light video camera, Red Bull energy drinks and podcasts of "This American Life" to pass the time, their mission is to find whoever has been abandoning piles of trash at the corner of Fitch Street and Quesada Avenue.

They're not out to catch the one person getting rid of an old mattress that no one on Craigslist would take, though city officials say that's a problem, too. The targets for these stings are hauling companies and contractors illegally dumping hazardous waste by the truckload to avoid the cost of disposing of it legally.

Just like the night before, the sun rises and Schneider and Hampton have nothing to report to the undercover police officers waiting nearby. But this is only the first week of several planned sting operations across the Bayview.

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"It's like fishing," said Schneider, who works in community programs for the Department of Public Works. "Sometimes you cast your line and don't catch anything, and sometimes you get a whopper."

Illegal dumping is a problem throughout the Bay Area, and in San Francisco it costs the city $4 million a year. Last year, Public Works collected almost 20,000 tons of illegally dumped items.

'A plague out here'

The agency fielded 22,114 requests from residents to clean up illegal dumping in 2012, and the Bayview sees the worst of it.

Hampton is a Public Works legal dumping specialist who grew up in the Bayview. The stakeout Thursday night was at the location of one of Hampton's worst memories on the job - unzipping a suitcase to find a dead dog.

"It's like a plague out here, and we need to stop it immediately," he said.

"We're seeing a very regular pattern of someone dumping huge amounts of material at certain locations," Nuru said. "This is a truck that pulls up on a dark street or some dead end where there's no people and offloads."

Hotspot monitoring

Thanks to a $300,000 grant from the California Integrated Waste Management Board, the city is now monitoring 25 hotspots of illegal dumping in the Bayview. "Hopefully, the time of the illegal act coincides with the timing of our sting," Nuru said.

Supervisor Malia Cohen, who represents the Bayview, said she gets complaints every day about illegal dumping. As she spoke to a reporter in her office, one of her aides answered a phone call from a Bayview resident reporting cans of paint and other garbage thrown away on Lathrop Avenue, a dead-end street.

"There are very few issues that I take on that everyone in District 10 agrees upon," Cohen said. "Going after illegal dumping is one of them."

In 2011, Cohen sponsored legislation to clarify the definition of debris and allow the city to sue illegal dumpers and recover cleanup costs. She hopes the stings will send a strong message to anyone involved in illegal dumping, which carries a fine of as much as $1,000.

"We are going after this aggressively," she said. "We're watching you, and we will catch you and prosecute you."

But finding and prosecuting illegal dumpers has been difficult. Only a handful of companies have been punished because most make sure they don't toss anything with an address that could lead back to them.

Prosecution not easy

City Attorney Dennis Herrera sued a trucking company and a roofing service in 2011 for allegedly repeatedly dumping asbestos-contaminated debris in Bayview-Hunters Point, costing the city $60,000 to remove. The case against the roofing company remains under an injunction and the trucking company was dismissed as a defendant. In August, the district attorney's office charged 61-year-old Eusebio Castillo of San Francisco with dumping 23 containers of oil and paint in the Bayview.

"They're very hard to catch; they're very sophisticated," Nuru said of illegal dumpers. "They're very familiar with the area and they know what they're doing is wrong, so they do everything they can to not be identified."

While the city waits to see if the stings work, the Department of Public Works has taken other steps to address the problem. Some of the cleanup costs have been shifted to the city's waste collector - under the new garbage contract, Recology will now respond to all reports of illegal dumping made to the city's 311 hot line, while Public Works will continue to do regular sweeps. The contract also allocates funds to hire Public Works outreach employees to educate residents and businesses about keeping San Francisco clean, including the laws about illegal dumping.

"We don't encourage neighbors to get into a fight or be confrontational, but they should take pictures if they can or notify police," Cohen said. "It's about communicating the message that we will not tolerate illegal dumping."